


let the memories be good for those who stay

by spacenarwhal



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, F/M, Sick Character, Team as Family
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-04
Updated: 2018-01-04
Packaged: 2019-02-28 01:58:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,265
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13261206
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spacenarwhal/pseuds/spacenarwhal
Summary: “Jakayla came in with half his face missing last night, I don’t think they’ve got much to spare for a small fever.” Jyn snaps. Bodhi winces. It’s hard to say if it’s because of the description of Jakayla’s injuries or because of her tone. Jyn drops her head—her heavy, useless, fever-stricken head—and chews on an apology.Jyn’s never been good at being sick.(Hoth-era fic)





	let the memories be good for those who stay

**Author's Note:**

> Per tradition I rang in the new year germ-ridden and gross. Which I have now channeled into fic. :-D

“You _need_ to rest.” Bodhi says, arms crossed firmly over his chest, feet planted just like Baze taught him when facing down an opponent. 

If Jyn felt less prone to tipping clean off her feet she’d feel proud at what a good pupil Bodhi’s turned out to be. 

“I _need_ to meet Skywalker at the south gate.” She says, voice harsh and throat burning. The thought of pressing her face against the icy wall holds a special sort of appeal at the moment but she needs Bodhi gone before she can indulge the urge. If she times it correctly she can do it for at least a good minute before she has to report for perimeter patrol. 

Normally Jyn wouldn’t mind finding an excuse to skiv off patrol, most things beat out sitting atop a stinking snow lizard for hours in the middle of yet another blizzard, but admitting as much to Bodhi right now will only serve to confirm whatever suspicions he has cooking in his head. This is what she gets for keeping people around, Jyn thinks to herself, frowning at Bodhi’s overly determined face. 

“You should check in with medbay.” Bodhi replies, unawares of Jyn’s emotional turmoil. Jyn swats at the hair hanging in her face, shoves it back under the brim of her hat to keep it out of her eyes. She exhales hard through her one working nostril and winces at the wheezing sound her other nostril produces. It’s hard to be intimating when she sounds like a dying gundark. Bodhi’s eyes crinkle at the corners, a twinge of victory in his features. 

Jyn doesn’t have time for this. If she doesn’t get moving soon she’s going to lose the will to stand upright, let alone the ability to actually mount a tauntaun. 

“Jakayla came in with half his face missing last night, I don’t think they’ve got much to spare for a small fever.” Jyn snaps. Bodhi winces. It’s hard to say if it’s because of the description of Jakayla’s injuries or because of her tone. Jyn drops her head—her heavy, useless, fever-stricken head—and chews on an apology. She’s never been good at being sick.

As a child among Saw’s rebels illness was just another fact of life, a burden to be shouldered and carried. There wasn’t time or resources to spare and certainly no one dedicated to coddling a child with a runny nose. On her own any illness was a weakness that might cost Jyn her life if not her livelihood, and she ignored all and any symptoms she could as though sheer force of will was enough to make them go away. Jyn likes to think it worked for the most part. 

“I think you bypassed small when you threw up this morning.” Bodhi says, not to be cowed by Jyn’s temper, and Jyn opens her mouth to protest only to but cut off by a sneeze. It sets her head pounding. Bodhi takes advantage of the silence to squeeze in, “Twice.” He waves two gloved fingers around as though Jyn needs the reminder. 

The flush that climbs Jyn’s neck has nothing to do with her fever and everything to do with the memory of Bodhi dodging out of the way as Jyn heaved all over the mess floor this morning. 

“So the veg-meat didn’t agree with me, that doesn’t mean I’m sick.” She says bitterly and Bodhi nods, reaching out to grip her lightly by the shoulders. 

Bodhi’s dark eyes look impossibly large on his face, calming the instinctual urge to pull free from his hands, as he guides her back inside her assigned quarters. “Of course not,” he answers, a teasing lilt to his voice that has Jyn plotting revenge, “but I imagine you’ll be more comfortable not being sick in bed than not being sick on a tauntaun.” They shuffle awkwardly over the threshold and the door sighs shut behind them. 

Bodhi’s grip doesn’t loosen until Jyn’s directly in front of her bunk, all the blankets in disarray just as she left them this morning because she could. There’s no armed guard to discipline her for not meeting regulations and no roommate who might steal her things is she gets careless. 

As far as rooms go her quarters aren’t much, narrow and low ceilinged, with exposed wires and a sloping floor that is never warmer than near freezing under Jyn’s feet. But it’s private and there’s a single-person bunk affixed to the wall and a little storage unit that doubles as a desk bolted into the perpendicular wall. It never feels like a cell and that’s more than Jyn can say for half the other places she’s laid her head, including the communal soldiers barracks she was assigned before the Rebellion made their base on Hoth. 

Jyn likes knowing she can leave the blankets in a pile and that they will still be there whenever it is she comes back, waiting for her to crawl beneath them. Today it just so happens to be a lot sooner than she anticipated. 

The sight of her bed breaks the fragile bones of her resistance. Jyn feels like every different kind of hell imaginable—has for days now—and her stomach is tight and uncomfortable, her throat on fire, her head heavy. Jyn collapses onto the edge of the bed with a bitten back sigh. In that moment the thin mattress pad beneath her feels like the softest thing in the world. 

Bodhi doesn’t gloat, just stares down at Jyn quietly, arms folding inward to cross over his chest. His own hair peeks out in wisps around his ears and neck from under his hat and Jyn thinks he looks only marginally better than she feels right now, tired and wane and cold like every other solider on this frozen base.

“Patrol?” Jyn mumbles weakly, complete sentences escaping her at the moment. Now that she’s sitting, Jyn could very easily tip sideways and fall asleep for the next two to three days if its all the same to Bodhi, but she thinks she probably ought to preserve a little dignity. He’s already seen her throw up twice today as it is. 

“Baze volunteered to cover for you.” Bodhi answers, poking her until she moves farther back. Jyn huffs a small laugh. Baze hates riding tauntauns more than just about anyone else on base. A part of her wants to get back on her feet just to see him off. 

Jyn is startled out of her own thoughts when Bodhi reaches down and tugs at the laces of her left boot. It’s jarring enough that Jyn jumps out of her stupor and pulls her legs out of reach, moving quicker than she’s managed in days. She frowns at the snow she pulls onto the bedding.

“Sorry—I—uh—should have asked.” Bodhi mumbles awkwardly, and Jyn shrugs in a way she hopes conveys he’s done her no harm. She's just not terribly used to people crowding into her space. There are exceptions—far and few between, the most noticeable one noticeably missing, deployed somewhere a galaxy away while Jyn is here, running patrols and reporting for dull duties, _not_ sulking, _not_ missing him and now, _not_ sick—but it’s hard to allow them even when she isn't feeling like steaming pile of bantha shit. 

Jyn shakes her head slightly, any harder makes her feel like her brain is bumping up against the backs of her eyes. “I can do it.” Her fingers fumble at her laces while Bodhi busies his own nervous hands by smoothing the snow from her sheets, thumping her thin pillow. She wants to tell him its a lost cause but she's too tired, yanks at her boots and lets them fall to the ground with matching thumps. She all but burrows under the blankets, pulling them over her until only the very top of her head is still exposed, eyes closed tight as though that’ll help ease some of the aching in her body. She’s survived worse than this, she knows she has, but there’s nothing especially gratifying to the thought, nothing that helps alleviate how terrible she feels now. 

"I'll be right back." Bodhi says hurriedly and Jyn doesn’t bother to shrug, just curls into herself tighter. There’s a light pat to the side of her head, awkward and fumbling, and then just the quick scuffle of Bodhi’s feet as he leaves. 

Jyn is a little startled by Bodhi’s return though she can’t be sure why. Bodhi isn’t what she’d consider a liar. He said he’d be back and now he is, depositing a mad pile of items on the small desk at Jyn’s bedside. 

She blinks up at him, disoriented and exhausted, and Bodhi is saying something, mouth moving in and out of that fidgety smile of his. He drops something on to the chair Jyn may or may not have stolen from the mess hall, the chair Cassian may or may not sit in when he works on his reports while keeping her company in this room. "This is the best I could find." Bodhi says. Jyn could cry when she realizes that the thing in the chair is a blanket, a rare commodity on Hoth, as coveted as a personal heating unit. Bodhi doesn’t tell her how he managed to score it, just shakes it out over her. She curls further into herself, limbs hugged close in the hope that it’ll help the warmth sink into her that much faster. Bodhi hums under his breath. "Brought some tea too.” He digs a small insulated flask out from the pile of things he dropped on the desk. “Chirrut says it’ll help settle your stomach and you should drink it before you eat again. I can run and get you something from the mess in a little bit. After you rest."

Jyn thinks she nods but she can’t be sure, just huddles back under the blanket. Bodhi hums again, a light melody without rhythm, and Jyn pries her eyes apart to see him settle down into the empty chair beside her. He wraps his jacket around himself, pulls his furred hood up over his head. “You know my mum used to say you had to feed a fever but starve a cold. Whatever that means. You’ve got both so—” He swallows a few extra syllables, clicks his teeth together hard. “She used to make the best bone broth. That’s what you need, some good bone broth.”

Jyn licks her lips, head fuzzy with pain and soft with sleep. She wants to ask what he’s doing. But all that comes to mind is the memory of Mama stirring amber honey into cups of tea, the steam rising up off the surface as she told Jyn to be careful. Her fingers were so sturdy, Jyn remembers, and Jyn’s hands so small, but she was so stubborn that she could hold her own mug.

“There’s another jacket down here.” Jyn croaks when she remembers how to speak, one fist sneaking out from beneath her blanket fortress to rap against the side of the bunk. The cold bites at her knuckles. 

Bodhi pulls loose the drawer wedged under the bed, plucks free the jacket kept within. Cassian said he wouldn’t need it where he was going, left it with Jyn to keep safe while he was gone. She wears it sometimes when she’s working in here, pulls it on over her own jacket as she sits in the chair he left empty. The cold is so much worst when you’re keeping still. 

(“S’pose you’ll want it back.” Jyn grins brazenly, hopes to tease something softer to his solemn face. The sleeves fall well pass her wrists, engulf her hands entirely, the shoulders sit sloppy and loose on her frame. Cassian’s mouth tips upward, but it isn’t quite a smile, his fingers cold as he pushes some of her hair out of her eyes. “I trust you.” Cassian answers and it would mean more if Jyn could go with him, if she could watch his back and keep him safe.)

Bodhi makes to shake it out and add it to the pile heaped atop Jyn but Jyn shakes her head, points at Bodhi. “You put it on.” She says, words slurred, and the confusion she sees in Bodhi’s face is reason enough to order him again. “If you’re really planning on just sitting here I mean.”

“Oh.” Bodhi says softly, studying the jacket in his gloved hands. “Thank you.” She closes her eyes again as Bodhi slips it on. If he recognizes it for what it is he keeps quiet. Jyn peeks at him again, watches him settle down into the spare chair and pull a datapad off the desk. 

“I put a bin there,” he says, pointing over the edge of the bunk near Jyn’s head, “In case you—uh—y’know, need it.” 

“Thanks.” She mumbles, blankets pulled up to her chin. There’s still a chill at the core of her bones, shivering under her skin, and a deep-seated ache all throughout. Her throat burns and her head throbs and she wants very much for someone who cannot be here to tell her this will pass, ridiculous as it feels.

Bodhi pulls the top blanket just a fraction higher, shields Jyn’s eyes from the stark overhead lights. They’ll power off eventually. 

“Get some sleep Jyn,” Bodhi says gently, “You’ll feel better for it.” 

“If you say so.” Jyn mumbles, and just this once, doesn’t feel the need to put up a fight.

End

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Winter Winds by Mumford & Sons


End file.
